If the physician doesn’t have time to get to them and call you, should you get them directly? (see KevinMD post on this)

Fortunately, HHS made a decision last month to require lab data be available to patients directly without the physician gatekeeper. Of course, they have 30-days to comply with the patient request, and it still requires the patient to request it. But, it’s a start.

“They found that when patients have access to their doctors’ notes, they feel more in control of their health care, better understand their medical issues, and report they are more likely to take their medications as prescribed.”

As we think about patient engagement, this type of transparency is important.

The next area of discussion might be around clinical trials. The people over at PatientsLikeMe just published an article discussing this topic and sharing how patients are working around clinical trials to identify themselves. I’m sure that most pharma companies and clinical trial companies will view this as heresy. But, it’s a modern day reality in terms of mobile and social technology. The question is how will this change clinical trials and will it improve results.

I certainly think that the data coming out of P2P (peer-to-peer) companies like PatientsLikeMe or CureTogether is really interesting.